Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Empires on the Edge of Chaos
Niall Ferguson, Foreign Affairs via Information Clearing House
here is no better illustration of the life cycle of a great power than The Course of Empire, a series of five paintings by Thomas Cole that hang in the New-York Historical Society. Cole was a founder of the Hudson River School and one of the pioneers of nineteenth-century American landscape painting; in The Course of Empire, he beautifully captured a theory of imperial rise and fall to which most people remain in thrall to this day.
Each of the five imagined scenes depicts the mouth of a great river beneath a rocky outcrop. In the first, The Savage State, a lush wilderness is populated by a handful of hunter-gatherers eking out a primitive existence at the break of a stormy dawn. The second picture, The Arcadian or Pastoral State, is of an agrarian idyll: the inhabitants have cleared the trees, planted fields, and built an elegant Greek temple. The third and largest of the paintings is The Consummation of Empire. Now, the landscape is covered by a magnificent marble entrepôt, and the contented farmer-philosophers of the previous tableau have been replaced by a throng of opulently clad merchants, proconsuls, and citizen-consumers. It is midday in the life cycle. Then comes Destruction. The city is ablaze, its citizens fleeing an invading horde that rapes and pillages beneath a brooding evening sky. Finally, the moon rises over the fifth painting, Desolation. There is not a living soul to be seen, only a few decaying columns and colonnades overgrown by briars and ivy.
Conceived in the mid-1830s, Cole’s great pentaptych has a clear message: all empires, no matter how magnificent, are condemned to decline and fall. The implicit suggestion was that the young American republic of Cole’s age would be better served by sticking to its bucolic first principles and resisting the imperial temptations of commerce, conquest, and colonization.
For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists, and the public at large have tended to think about empires in such cyclical and gradual terms. “The best instituted governments,” the British political philosopher Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke, wrote in 1738, “carry in them the seeds of their destruction: and, though they grow and improve for a time, they will soon tend visibly to their dissolution. Every hour they live is an hour the less that they have to live.”
Idealists and materialists alike have shared that assumption. In his book Scienza nuova, the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico describes all civilizations as passing through three phases: the divine, the heroic, and the human, finally dissolving into what Vico called “the barbarism of reflection.” For Hegel and Marx, it was the dialectic that gave history its unmistakable beat. History was seasonal for Oswald Spengler, the German historian, who wrote in his 1918-22 book, The Decline of the West, that the nineteenth century had been “the winter of the West, the victory of materialism and skepticism, of socialism, parliamentarianism, and money.” The British historian Arnold Toynbee’s universal theory of civilization proposed a cycle of challenge, response, and suicide. Each of these models is different, but all share the idea that history has rhythm…
(26 February 2010)
Majoring in Idiocy
Jason Peters, The Front Porch Republic
“It” here refers to the debt that students incur while in college, and the proffered answer to the question is “no.”
Stossel interviews three college graduates who can’t find jobs that pay well enough to discharge their debts. Each feels in some way the victim of a false promise, deceived about the much-touted post-graduation prospects. In the course of this segment we also see Senator Clinton tossing off a well-worn statistic—that on average college grads make a million bucks more than those who don’t go to college (a statistic the segment calls into doubt)—and then President Obama expressing what is apparently an unimpeachable national wish: that all our children go to college and get high-paying jobs.
Whereupon an “educational consultant” named Marty Nemko tells us that all this is bunk. A college diploma, he implies, is hardly worth the paper it’s printed on. It’s “like a hunting license for a job,” he says.
Not to credit the sources too much, mind you, but what makes all of this so dull is that it is all so obvious. If we frame the discussion in purely monetary terms, a college degree is not worth what it costs. It will certainly “pay off” for a lot of people, but for many others–and their numbers are likely to increase–it probably won’t, especially for those who borrow to attend a highly selective, which is to say a highly expensive, liberal-arts college.
…I would not be misunderstood. I am not objecting in principle to the fact that a college education comes with a price—that is, with a price tag. I close the classroom door when I lecture because, as the old joke goes, “they’re lining up in the halls out there, and I don’t do this for free.” But I am objecting to the fact that whereas education does come with a price and a price tag, it no longer comes with a cost.
It does not come with a cost because colleges and universities are essentially diploma retailers obsequiously bent on making the shopping experience of their customers enjoyable and painless. Discounts are everywhere. Items are clearly marked. The choices are many, the objects glittery. Can I get you some coffee? Hot chocolate? Be sure to visit our café on the third floor. Please take the moving stairs. One of our associates will be glad to assist you.
…For education presently conceived and presently practiced has but one goal: the mass production of idiots.
I’m speaking—I hope—in fairly precise terms here.
An “idiot,” from the Greek idios (“private,” “own,” “peculiar”), is someone who is peculiar because he is closed in on himself or separated or cut off. In short, he is a specialist. If he knows anything, he knows one thing.
…Being an idiot of the first order myself, I recommend as a precautionary measure “driving knowledge out of its categories,” as Wes Jackson and Bill Vitek say in The Virtues of Ignorance. I recommend as a second precautionary measure thinking of knowledge as a tool and of ignorance as a perspective. Such, at any rate, is the advice of one contributor to this fine book. By such measures and by the careful and humble discipline of broad learning we might arrive at the great Socratic conclusion…
(3 March 2010)
Climate-Resilient Industrial Development Paths
Lyuba Zarsky , triplecrisis blog
Nobody was surprised by the February 19 announcement of the resignation of Yvo de Boer as head of the UN’s climate talks. In Copenhagen, De Boer presided over the most chaotic, costly and in the end, fruitless attempt to negotiate a multilateral treaty in the history of global environmental governance.
In the wake of Copenhagen, climate activists, experts and leaders alike are asking “what way forward”? Some, like the South Centre’s Martin Khor, are gearing up for the next round of global talks, which will be held in Mexico in July. Others are refocusing energies on national or state level climate policy, including key states like California. Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, is hosting an alternative climate conference in April to build political support for the concept of “climate debt” and to press for a “declaration of the rights of mother nature.” De Boer himself has thrown in his lot with business—he will join KPMG as an advisor on global climate and sustainability.
While the global climate talks are in crisis, the climate crisis is unfolding. In a review of recent scientific studies, a team of Sydney-based climate scientists found that signs of global warming are accelerating faster than predicted, including melting of Arctic sea-ice, glaciers, and ice sheets. Sea level rise in 2009 was 80 percent greater than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just two years before. Over the past 25 years, temperatures have increased at an average rate of 0.19 degrees centigrade per decade. A September 2009 conference of climate scientists at Oxford University found that “since the late 1990s, greenhouse gas emissions have increased at close to the most extreme IPCC scenarios” and there is a significant possibility of 4 degrees warming before the end of the century.
What this means is that not just our children or grandchildren but we ourselves will be living with and adapting to increasing climate instability, with attendant impacts on our physical, social and economic lives and livelihoods.
The poorest among us, both globally and in our own communities, are the most vulnerable on two counts. First is bio-physical risk. Regions and locales are differentially vulnerable to the changing patterns of rainfall, extreme weather events, and sea level rise that climate instability will bring. Many of the areas expected to be hardest hit—for example, west and central Africa, South Asia, the Andes –are home to some of the poorest people on the planet…
(22 February 2010)
Related:
Climate-Resilient Industrial Development Paths
GDAE Working Paper 10-01 February 2010
In conjunction with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)
The unfolding drama of global climate change has paradigm-shifting implications for development theory and policy. Despite recent findings that the Washington Consensus is adrift, development practice remains largely wedded to global, market-driven neo-liberal policies based on maximizing GNP growth and high-energy consumption, by maximizing inflows of foreign investment, integrating with global supply chains, and eschewing pro-active industry policies.
The climate change imperative—the urgent need to both mitigate and adapt to climate change—comes at an opportune moment to consider how industrial transformation and economic development could—and indeed, must—evolve along new “climate-resilient” paths. Development theory has been shaken loose by the economic, social and environmental shortcomings of neo-liberal orthodoxy.
This paper by GDAE Research Fellow Lyuba Zarsky, who is also an International Fellow at IIED, explores the broad contours of climate-resilient industrial development paths. She defines development as an increase in local capacities for production and innovation and argues that the overarching goal of development in a climate-constrained world is not growth or industrialization per se but the generation of sustainable livelihoods.
Zarsky compares three distinct development models and suggests that the so-called “new developmentalist” model, with its overarching objective of building endogenous productive capacity and a strong role for government in industrial development, make it the most robust of the three models as a starting point for the design of climate-resilient development paths. Without these two elements, it is highly unlikely that developing economies will develop on a low-carbon trajectory or significantly reduce their vulnerability to intensifying climate instability. Much additional work is needed, however, to develop the theory and praxis of climate-resilient development paths.
Can we design cities for happiness?
Jay Walljasper, Shareable Cities
Happiness itself is a commons to which everyone should have equal access.
That’s the view of Enrique Peñalosa, who is not a starry-eyed idealist given to abstract theorizing. He’s actually a politician, who served as mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, for three years, and now travels the world spreading a message about how to improve quality-of-life for everyone living in today’s cities.
Peñalosa’s ideas stand as a beacon of hope for cities of the developing world, which even with their poverty and immense problems will absorb much of the world’s population growth over the next half-century. Based on his experiences in Bogotá, Peñalosa believes it’s a mistake to give up on these cities as good places to live.
“If we in the Third World measure our success or failure as a society in terms of income, we would have to classify ourselves as losers until the end of time,” declares Peñalosa. “So with our limited resources, we have to invent other ways to measure success. This might mean that all kids have access to sports facilities, libraries, parks, schools, nurseries.”
Peñalosa uses phrases like “quality of life” or “social justice” rather than “commons-based society” to describe his agenda of offering poor people first-rate government services and pleasant public places, yet it is hard to think of anyone who has done more to reinvigorate the commons in his or her own community…
…Transforming Bogotá
In three years (1998-2001) as mayor of Colombia’s capital city of 7 million, Peñalosa’s Administration accomplished the following:
- Led a team that created the TransMilenio, a bus rapid transit system (BRT), which now carries a half-million passengers daily on special bus lanes that offer most of the advantages of a subway at a fraction of the cost.
- Built 52 new schools, refurbished 150 others and increased student enrollment by 34 percent.
- Established or improved 1200 parks and playgrounds throughout the city.
- Built three central and 10 neighborhood libraries.
- Built 100 nurseries for children under five.
- Improved life in the slums by providing water service to 100 percent of Bogotá households.
- Bought undeveloped land on the outskirts of the city to prevent real estate speculation and ensured that it will be developed as affordable housing with electrical, sewage, and telephone service as well as space reserved for parks, schools, and greenways.
- Established 300 kilometers of separated bikeways, the largest network in the developing world.
- Created the world’s longest pedestrian street, 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) crossing much of the city as well as a 45- kilometer (28 miles) greenway along a path that had been originally slated for an eight-lane highway.
- Reduced traffic by almost 40 percent by implementing a system where motorists must leave cars at home during rush hour two days a week. He also raised parking fees and local gas taxes, with half of the proceeds going to fund the new bus transit system.
- Inaugurated an annual car-free day, where everyone from CEOs to janitors commuted to work in some way other than a private automobile.
- Planted 100,000 trees…
(3 March 2010)
Adapted from the forthcoming book, Things We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons, by Jay Walljasper and On The Commons (July 2010, New Press).
What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism
Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, Monthly Review
For those concerned with the fate of the earth, the time has come to face facts: not simply the dire reality of climate change but also the pressing need for social-system change. The failure to arrive at a world climate agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009 was not simply an abdication of world leadership, as is often suggested, but had deeper roots in the inability of the capitalist system to address the accelerating threat to life on the planet. Knowledge of the nature and limits of capitalism, and the means of transcending it, has therefore become a matter of survival. In the words of Fidel Castro in December 2009: “Until very recently, the discussion [on the future of world society] revolved around the kind of society we would have. Today, the discussion centers on whether human society will survive.”1
I. The Planetary Ecological Crisis
There is abundant evidence that humans have caused environmental damage for millennia. Problems with deforestation, soil erosion, and salinization of irrigated soils go back to antiquity. Plato wrote in Critias:
What proof then can we offer that it [the land in the vicinity of Athens] is…now a mere remnant of what it once was?…You are left (as with little islands) with something rather like the skeleton of a body wasted by disease; the rich, soft soil has all run away leaving the land nothing but skin and bone. But in those days the damage had not taken place, the hills had high crests, the rocky plane of Phelleus was covered with rich soil, and the mountains were covered by thick woods, of which there are some traces today. For some mountains which today will only support bees produced not so long ago trees which when cut provided roof beams for huge buildings whose roofs are still standing. And there were a lot of tall cultivated trees which bore unlimited quantities of fodder for beasts. The soil benefitted from an annual rainfall which did not run to waste off the bare earth as it does today, but was absorbed in large quantities and stored in retentive layers of clay, so that what was drunk down by the higher regions flowed downwards into the valleys and appeared everywhere in a multitude of rivers and springs. And the shrines which still survive at these former springs are proof of the truth of our present account of the country.2
…II. Common Ground: Transcending Business as Usual
We strongly agree with many environmentalists who have concluded that continuing “business as usual” is the path to global disaster. Many people have determined that, in order to limit the ecological footprint of human beings on the earth, we need to have an economy—particularly in the rich countries—that doesn’t grow, so as to be able to stop and possibly reverse the increase in pollutants released, as well as to conserve non-renewable resources and more rationally use renewable resources. Some environmentalists are concerned that, if world output keeps expanding and everyone in developing countries seeks to attain the standard of living of the wealthy capitalist states, not only will pollution continue to increase beyond what the earth system can absorb, but we will also run out of the limited non-renewable resources on the globe. The Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis Meadows, and William Behrens, published in 1972 and updated in 2004 as Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, is an example of concern with this issue.19 It is clear that there are biospheric limits, and that the planet cannot support the close to 7 billion people already alive (nor, of course, the 9 billion projected for mid-century) at what is known as a Western, “middle class” standard of living. The Worldwatch Institute has recently estimated that a world which used biocapacity per capita at the level of the contemporary United States could only support 1.4 billion people.20 The primary problem is an ancient one and lies not with those who do not have enough for a decent standard of living, but rather with those for whom enough does not exist. As Epicurus said: “Nothing is enough to someone for whom enough is little.”21 A global social system organized on the basis of “enough is little” is bound eventually to destroy all around it and itself as well.
…III. Characteristics of Capitalism in Conflict with the Environment
The economic system that dominates nearly all corners of the world is capitalism, which, for most humans, is as “invisible” as the air we breathe. We are, in fact, largely oblivious to this worldwide system, much as fish are oblivious to the water in which they swim. It is capitalism’s ethic, outlook, and frame of mind that we assimilate and acculturate to as we grow up. Unconsciously, we learn that greed, exploitation of laborers, and competition (among people, businesses, countries) are not only acceptable but are actually good for society because they help to make our economy function “efficiently.”
Let’s consider some of the key aspects of capitalism’s conflict with environmental sustainability.
…IV. Characteristics of Capitalism in Conflict with Social Justice
The characteristics of capitalism discussed above—the necessity to grow; the pushing of people to purchase more and more; expansion abroad; use of resources without concern for future generations; the crossing of planetary boundaries; and the predominant role often exercised by the economic system over the moral, legal, political, cultural forms of society—are probably the characteristics of capitalism that are most harmful for the environment. But there are other characteristics of the system that greatly impact the issue of social justice. It is important to look more closely at these social contradictions imbedded in the system.
VI. What Can Be Done Now?
In the absence of systemic change, there certainly are things that have been done and more can be done in the future to lessen capitalism’s negative effects on the environment and people. There is no particular reason why the United States can’t have a better social welfare system, including universal health care, as is the case in many other advanced capitalist countries. Governments can pass laws and implement regulations to curb the worst environmental problems. The same goes for the environment or for building affordable houses. A carbon tax of the kind proposed by James Hansen, in which 100 percent of the dividends go back to the public, thereby encouraging conservation while placing the burden on those with the largest carbon footprints and the most wealth, could be instituted. New coal-fired plants (without sequestration) could be blocked and existing ones closed down.52 At the world level, contraction and convergence in carbon emissions could be promoted, moving to uniform world per capita emissions, with cutbacks far deeper in the rich countries with large per capita carbon footprints.53 The problem is that very powerful forces are strongly opposed to these measures. Hence, such reforms remain at best limited, allowed a marginal existence only insofar as they do not interfere with the basic accumulation drive of the system.
Indeed, the problem with all these approaches is that they allow the economy to continue on the same disastrous course it is currently following. We can go on consuming all we want (or as much as our income and wealth allow), using up resources, driving greater distances in our more fuel-efficient cars, consuming all sorts of new products made by “green” corporations, and so on. All we need to do is support the new “green” technologies (some of which, such as using agricultural crops to make fuels, are actually not green!) and be “good” about separating out waste that can be composted or reused in some form, and we can go on living pretty much as before—in an economy of perpetual growth and profits.
The very seriousness of the climate change problem arising from human-generated carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions has led to notions that it is merely necessary to reduce carbon footprints (a difficult problem in itself). The reality, though, is that there are numerous, interrelated, and growing ecological problems arising from a system geared to the infinitely expanding accumulation of capital. What needs to be reduced is not just carbon footprints, but ecological footprints, which means that economic expansion on the world level and especially in the rich countries needs to be reduced, even cease. At the same time, many poor countries need to expand their economies. The new principles that we could promote, therefore, are ones of sustainable human development. This means enough for everyone and no more. Human development would certainly not be hindered, and could even be considerably enhanced for the benefit of all, by an emphasis on sustainable human, rather than unsustainable economic, development.
VII. Another Economic System Is Not Just Possible—It’s Essential
The foregoing analysis, if correct, points to the fact that the ecological crisis cannot be solved within the logic of the present system. The various suggestions for doing so have no hope of success. The system of world capitalism is clearly unsustainable in: (1) its quest for never ending accumulation of capital leading to production that must continually expand to provide profits; (2) its agriculture and food system that pollutes the environment and still does not allow universal access to a sufficient quantity and quality of food; (3) its rampant destruction of the environment; (4) its continually recreating and enhancing of the stratification of wealth within and between countries; and (5) its search for technological magic bullets as a way of avoiding the growing social and ecological problems arising from its own operations…
(4 Mar 2010)
Sent in by EB reader Maggie May. Very long significant article, including what looks like a section on Capitalism 101. -KS
